15 Hottest Super Bowl Halftime Show Pics

Judging the hottest Super Bowl Halftime show pictures is a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. Deciding on what’s sexier, Keith Richards and friends clanking their old bones around on stage or Katy Perry doing, well, anything was not as difficult as you would think. Also, as you might imagine, most of the hottest pictures are of the female performers. No, actually, all of the hottest pictures are of the female performers. Sorry Bruno Mars. The most difficult part of this job was narrowing down an entire performance into one photo.

The Super Bowl Halftime show is a big show. About 115 million people tune into the performance. That’s a lot of people watching, so you go in expecting something big. These performers give it their all and, almost always, the females really show off the sexy, particularly considering that males are still the target audience (even though some numbers suggest upwards of 47% of viewers are female). In the process, we’ve had to cut out some really amazing photos and some really disgusting ones. With so many cameras flicking, you expect to see some bad photos, but it’s pretty remarkable how many terrible angles, awkward poses and horrifying facial expressions are captured… Isn’t that right Beyoncé? But that’s not what this list is about. We’re celebrating only the hot photos here.

You might think that having the chance to go back and sort through all these photos of such beautiful women was the best part of this activity, but it was getting to rewatch these performances as a whole that was the real treat. When you watch these things live, you miss so many of the subtleties. In each performance, from the very beginning, there is some really weird stuff going on. From strange costume choices, weird sets and unique background dancers, a Super Bowl Halftime show has it all. It’s the people who decide on these oddities that are the true heroes. Like whoever decided on, built and then followed through with putting Katy Perry on a giant frickin lion, you sir are a gentleman and a scholar. Your work will always be appreciated. Here are the 15 hottest Super Bowl Halftime pics.

15.Janet Jackson

The classic and never-to-be-forgotten Wardrobe Malfunction, another way of saying, Justin Timberlake intentionally pulling off the removable breast-covering from Janet Jackson‘s chest revealing her bare boob and a sun-shaped nipple shield. You can see why “wardrobe malfunction” is the more popular term. Still, malfunction is just a bold-faced lie. Of course that was meant to happen. It was part of choreography for God’s sake. The FCC fined the CBS broadcasters big-time after this event, the lovingly named “nipplegate.” People thought America’s moral fiber was crumbling, MTV was banned from doing any future NFL shows and Janet Jackson’s career was essentially over. As for Justin, meh, he was still as popular as ever and he grabbed Jackson’s boob. The guy’s a winner through and through.

14.Christina Aguilera

When it comes to Christina Aguilera and Super Bowls, she will always be best known for botching the national anthem at the 2011 Super Bowl instead of her Halftime show a decade earlier. When singing the anthem, Aguilera forgot the words or felt like changing them. Instead of singing “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming” she went with “What so proudly we watched at the twilight’s last reaming,” a valiant effort. Still, we’re going to give her credit for her Halftime performance as well. At least, we’re going to give credit to her hotness. It’s pretty amazing looking at Christina here, so young and proper. Two years after this modest performance, she was crawling on the ground in her underwear all sweaty and singing about getting “dirty.” This is tame Christina but still hot Christina. Enrique Iglesias is pretty handsome here, too.

13.Gloria Estefan

After the New Kids on the Block, Gloria Estefan is the true O.G. of Super Bowl Halftime shows. We would be wrong to exclude her. Way back in 1992, the Buffalo Bills were good and Estefan was hot. She was also hugely popular with the kids and the NFL was trying to draw in new audiences. The show started like all shows started in the 90s, with show tunes and terrible acting. The opening musical routine was shockingly bad, but just when the audience thought they were in for the same old garbage Halftime Shows from the past, these little kids started rapping. That was a big moment for the NFL. Then came Estefan. Yeah, her outfit was weird, but this is the early 90s, that was what you wore then, even the men. Estefan was so hot that she got invited back in 1999 to perform again. Unfortunately, neither Estefan nor her music was hot in her return.

12.Madonna

Sometimes it feels like Madonna is at a point in her career (for like the last decade) where she just wings it whenever she performs. She’s Madonna. Who the hell is going to tell her anything different? Like at one point during her Super Bowl performance, which she looked pretty hot in by the way, Madonna is dancing around with the guys from LMFAO and she gets on the ground and is like “hey, buddy, grab my foot. I’m gonna do some breakdancing.” Now this poor guy is probably thinking, “uh, ma’am, you’re like 63-years old. You really think you should be trying this at the Super Bowl?” But it’s Madonna, so the guy grabs her leg, she gyrates and shudder a bit and the crowd goes crazy. Boom. Never give up on your dreams. There was also a guy in a dress bouncing around on a rope for some reason. He almost made the list.

11.Jessica Simpson

No, in truth, Jessica Simpson didn’t really “perform” at the Halftime Show. All she really did was yell out, “Houston! Choose to Party,” but this was 2004 and Jessica Simpson that means she was 2004 Jessica Simpson hot. This also just happened to be the year that Janet Jackson showed the world her nipplage area, so no one cared about anything or anyone else but that. But let’s not forget the sparkliness of Simpson. If it wasn’t for Jackson’s boob, we might still be talking about how pretty she looked. This could have been her moment. She did a hell of a job introducing that marching band too, but it was her looks that were most important on that day, the day that we all became desensitized to nudity on live TV.

10.Nicki Minaj

Nicki Minaj and MIA went up on stage to rap a quick, like real quick, verse each while Madonna performed at Super Bowl 46 in 2012. It was a weird performance from start to finish, but this portion really upped the ante. Everyone was dressed like Egyptian-style cheerleaders, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but Nicki looked real nice. In her defense, a lot of people like to pretend that Nicki’s entire look is built around her backside, but, during this performance, she barely even turned around. On top of that, when she did turn around, her skirt obscured her bottom. Whether that was mandated by the NFL or something she chose to do, it showed that Minaj is more about her music than her look. That being said, her look was on point. There’s something about Egyptian cheerleaders that really works.

9.Tina Turner

Give the old girl some love. Look at her; she’s about 60 years old here and doesn’t look a day over 58. By the time Tina Turner performed at the Super Bowl, she had already been in the music industry for 45 years. She’s looking mighty fine for her age too. Those background dancers though! They certainly didn’t make the show any less sexy. Good on Tina for putting that show together. She’s got the confidence to slap on some skin-tight leather and surround herself with drop-dead dancers less than half her age. She then gets up there and just belts it out. Her dance moves weren’t quite what they were in the early years, but hey, not everyone wants to take a risk breakdancing like Madonna.

8.Shania Twain

In 2003, Shania Twain did the Super Bowl and she blew people away. You don’t even have to like country music to enjoy what the Canadian beauty threw down on that stage. You know, Twain was so hot that she put pressure on the industry to top it the following year. This led us to Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake and they ruined everything (or made everything better). What is perhaps even more amazing than Twain’s beauty is that she did the whole performance in the same outfit. Nowadays, the Super Bowl shows involve costume changes in between verses so that every word is displayed in fashion as well. Twain was old fashioned. She put on one sexy dress with almost no fabric from the waist up, a leather jacket and went out sang a few songs.

7.Britney

The year was 2001 and the Halftime Show featured N’SYNC, Aerosmith and Britney Spears. N’SYNC started it off with a silly dance that led into Aerosmith. Aerosmith did their thing; it was cool. You have to wonder, though, how many times people have tried to throw something into Steven Tyler‘s huge gaping mouth while he’s performing. When Britney finally comes out, the crowd is just begging for a female presence. There sure is a lot of dudes on stage at this point. She comes out and looks great. This is 2001 after all. Do you remember how hot Britney was back then? It was all the show coordinators could do to keep Justin Timberlake from getting anywhere near her breasts, trying to relive his Super Bowl glory days. It’s awesome seeing Britney in that Aerosmith shirt, but it would have been a whole lot cooler if Tyler was wearing a Britney shirt too.

6.Gwen Stefani

Gwen Stefani might be a tad weird. You might not enjoy her music or her new-age fashion, but Gwen Stefani is a rocket and, in 2003, she was a rocket in mid-flight. Her performance was nothing special. She came out with her band, No Doubt, and did a song, but listen closely sweet, sweet children. It’s not about the music at a Halftime Show. It’s about how hot Stefani was and she looked insanely hot singing that one song. Basically, she wore two bras, a nasty pair of tearaway pants of some sort and red underwear just peeking above the pant line. It was simple but very effective. More than 13 years later, Stefani still looks good, but she probably watches this performance like an old family movie thinking about how great she used to look.

5.Beyoncé

Unfortunately for Beyoncé, of her entire Super Bowl performance, the picture that has had the most play is the one where she is straight Hulking out, gams looking she ain’t skipped a leg day in her entire life. Even still, her performance was excellent, one of the better Halftime Shows in recent memory and she looked predictably gorgeous throughout most of it. It’s pretty amazing that she does like a 64-song set in under 15 minutes. It’s truly exhausting watching this great woman work. We cheated and took two photos from her performance for this entry because she’s just too hot to pick one. We’re confident that you’ll get over it.

4.Destiny’s Child

Technically, Beyoncé gets two entries from the same show, but no one’s going to complain. Not only is she one of the biggest performers in the history of music, she’s also really hot and this list is built around that. During her Super Bowl performance, Kelly Rowland and Michelle “the other member” Williams come popping out of the stage. It was a nice little Destiny’s Child reunion for all the football fans at the stadium who clearly cared very deeply about the state of this once-great pop group. The performance was well done too, even if Beyoncé’s old friends looked a little out of practice. Still, both Kelly and Michelle looked as beautiful as always.

3.Fergie

OK, ever since that photo of Fergie with pee all over her pants has made its rounds around the internet, people have started to hate on Fergie, but do we have to remind you that pre-pee-Fergie was one of the hottest women alive. In fact, that pee happened before this performance, so let’s not let a little urine sully her good looks. Now, her choice of outfit in the Black Eyed Peas performance for Super Bowl XLV isn’t our favorite, but only Fergie could pull this off as well as she did. Those big ass shoulder pads make her look like a left tackle and not a singer, but we’ll damned if her coming down on that stripper’s pole wasn’t the hottest thing we saw in 2011. Black Eyed Peas are really strange in general, so things got weirder the longer the show went on. It was nice to have Fergie shaking it about to distract everyone though.

2.Katy Perry

It’s only after rewatching Katy Perry’s show that you can truly appreciate the artistry involved in it. We already mentioned the lion, but do you remember that, at the end of that bit, Perry mimed lion’s roar as the lion went up on its hind legs and gave out a massive roar throughout the stadium? Only a true master of the performing arts could come up with that idea. Just a treat to watch. Basically the whole time Perry’s in that fire outfit, she looks angry, so we’ve not included the photos from that. After that, there was the beach bit, the talking trees and beach balls and, of course, the dancing sharks. In this routine, Perry’s outfit make her breasts look like beach balls, which was a nice touch. She then danced around for a bit with Missy Elliot until she jumped on a frickin star and flew through the air like a… firework. We didn’t want to have to say it, but she really did look like a firework.

1.Beyoncé

via CBS Sports

Sorry, Beyoncé. How could we not include at least one of the bad shots? You take so many great ones that you have to allow us to jump on these rare opportunities. This is a magnificent shot. Forget all the other stuff, this is a true piece of artwork. We often wonder, during our frequent long looks at this photo, what lyric was she singing at this moment? What was the motivation for this pose? It’s a mid-action shot like this that reminds us of how much movement was going on during this show. Stomping, growling, grunting, yelling, it was all very forceful. It’s no wonder that there were so many unflattering stills. Listen Beyoncé. We hate to be the ones to tell you this. You’re one of the most beautiful people on the planet, but this is a horrible picture.